Add MS 27329

This manuscript primarily contains the work of Henry Daniel (b. c. 1315-1320, d. after 1385), a scholar, gardener and healer. During his life, Daniel studied medicine, cultivated a large garden at Stepney in London (in which he claims to have had 242 different plants), and, at a later age, joined the Dominican order. As a Dominican friar, he may have gained access to the sources that enabled him to translate learned works, write a urine treatise (the Liber Uricrisiarum, completed in 1379), and create a compendious herbal. This manuscript contains one of the two identified copies of this herbal. The herbal provides a large number of entries for plants that are organised alphabetically. It has been divided into two sections: a herbal proper, and a section on woods, gems, minerals and animals. This manuscript’s version is thought to represent Daniel’s intended work most closely. The other version, extant in Arundel MS 42 (ff. 3r-92r), is thought to be a work in progress. The copy in Add MS 27329 contains more entries, and presents these in a more organised manner. It also includes a lengthy entry on the use of rosemary (ff. 16r-81r), which is also extant as an independent treatise in several manuscripts.

Daniel has relied on many ancient and medieval authorities and sources, including Dioscorides (De materia medica), Platearius (Circa instans), Bartholomaeus Anglicus (De proprietatibus rerum), the Alphita (a botanical glossary), Pliny (Historia naturalis), Macer (De viribus herbarum), and Albertus Magnus, whose work (‘boke of experiments’) he claims to have read at Bologna (f. 47v: ‘at Boloygne’). However, he also refers to his own urine treatise, which indicates that he completed his herbal after 1379.

Daniel’s work stands out from other herbals because of the personal observations he makes about plants and his special attention to their habitats; he often indicates where particular plants can be found in England. Daniel also makes a distinction between native plants in the wild and plants that had been introduced to England and were cultivated in gardens only (e.g. rosemary, which had been introduced to England in c. 1340).

Contents:

ff. 4r-139v: Henry Daniel, De Re Herbaria (a treatise on herbs), beginning ‘incipit aaron danielis’.

ff. 140r-236r: Henry Daniel, De Arboribus (a treatise on trees, gems, minerals and animals).

ff. 236v-238v: Anonymous, De Pestilentia Libellus, dated to 1468.

The manuscript contains a number of additions:

f. 2v: Miscellaneous Latin recipes (including recipes for making clysters-enemas), added in the 15th century.

f. 3r: A title page, added by James Cobbes.

f. 166v: A Latin recipe, added in the 15th century.

f. 181v: A Latin recipe, added in the 15th century.

f. 236r: A Latin recipe, added in the 15th century.

f. 239r: A Latin note, added by James Cobbes.

f. 239r-240r: Miscellaneous recipes in Latin, and two in English on f. 239r (one is for ‘mygreyn or eny peyn in the head’); one Latin recipe is dated to 1499 (f. 238v); one to 1494 (f. f. 238v); and another one to 1466 (f. 240r); one recipe is attributed to a certain 'Magister Calthorp' (f. 240r).

Decoration:

Small initials in red ink throughout the manuscript, one with a human face in red ink inside its letter (f. 114r), one with green foliate pen-flourishing (f. 117v), and one with green foliate pen-work decoration inside its letter (f. 118r).

The manuscript contains a number of pen-drawings (some faint) in brown or black ink, added at later stages: a human face (f. 2v); a knight’s helmet (lower margin of f. 18r); a man lying down (lower margin of f. 29r); a foliate form (lower margin of f. 127v); a human head with sores, perhaps related to the description of the medical application of Asphaltum bitumen (lower margin of f. 160r); 5 intersecting circles with ‘ihc’ (‘ih[esus]’) written at their centres (lower margin of f. 193r); a woman lying in bed (f. 222v). Several manicules in brown ink have been added to the margins throughout the manuscript.